AN: This is in a series of "shorts" that I'm doing for entertainment value as I rewatch some episodes. Some of them are interpretations/rewrites of scenes that are in each episode. Some are scenes that never happened but could have in "imagination land". They aren't meant to be taken seriously and they aren't meant to be mind-blowing fic. They're just for entertainment value and allowing me to stretch my proverbial writing muscles. If you find any enjoyment in them at all, then I'm glad. If you don't, I apologize for wasting your time. They're "shorts" or "drabbles" or whatever you want to call them so I'm not worrying with how long they are. Some will be shorter, some will be longer.
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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He got a few sideways looks as he made his way through their makeshift camp holding the bottle—which he'd found in the woods and washed clean in the creek—that held the single Cherokee Rose.
He ignored the looks he got, though. What he was doing was nobody's business but his own and they were all too nosy for their own good anyway.
When Carol wasn't out in the open, in her obvious locations, Daryl knew that she was probably in the RV. He mounted the steps and opened the door. The RV was usually a mess. It was a catch-all for everything and everyone used the space, but hardly anyone ever bothered to tidy up after themselves even the tiniest little bit.
Except now, looking around, the space looked so transformed that Daryl almost could have been convinced that, somehow, he'd stumbled into the wrong RV entirely. It was clean. It smelled faintly of lemons, and all the mess that had been spread around was now neatly tidied up.
It had to have been Carol that did it because Daryl was pretty sure that none of the others would have put forth the effort to clean up what they couldn't even be bothered to keep straight on a regular day.
It looked nice. It almost looked like the kind of place you could comfortably call home. It looked nicer, honestly, than at least a few of the places that Daryl had lived in his life before all this madness had begun.
Daryl made his way to the small bedroom of the RV and found Carol studying over a basket full of items that she needed to mend—something else to keep her mind and hands busy now that the cleaning was done and the time was only slowly ticking forward. He didn't know how to present her with the flower, exactly, so he simply cleared his throat to draw her attention and he put the bottle on the small shelf where she would see it.
"A flower?" She asked.
"A Cherokee Rose," Daryl responded.
Her expression said that she didn't know what to say or do—maybe she didn't understand why it was that he would bring her a flower. Maybe, honestly, Daryl wasn't sure why it was that he would bring her a flower. She was waiting for something, though. She was waiting for some explanation. And Daryl hadn't prepared anything.
But she didn't seem to be the kind that would judge him. No matter what he said, she wasn't going to hold it against him. She'd have accepted, more than likely, the explanation that he found it while looking for Sophia—and it gave him some hope that he wanted to share with her—as readily and easily as she'd have accepted the explanation that he just saw the thing in the dirt outside and thought that she might just want a flower. Carol didn't seem to be the kind to judge him.
So he told her the truth—or as close as he could get to it.
He told her about the legend of the Cherokee Rose. He told her the story that he'd heard, so many years ago, and he watched her expression change as she listened. She smiled at him, softly, like it was a wonderful thing—the flower, but the story as well. She smiled at him like he was something wonderful for thinking to bring it to her when it was really just a symbolic flower that practically grew like a weed around the state.
He meant to tell her, in addition to the legend itself, the fact that he'd found it outside an abandoned house. He meant to tell her that he thought that Sophia had stayed there, passed the night maybe, and that she'd gotten her belly full on sardines and other scavenged food left behind by whoever had owned the house before.
He didn't tell her all that, though. He found that he couldn't. Because while he was telling her the story—one that Merle would have told him he was dumb and at least a little superstitious for repeating—she wiped at her eyes and wiped away tears just like the ones that he was telling her about. The tears that made the roses grow in the first place. And, seeing the tears, Daryl forgot all the things that he meant to tell her.
All the while, she smiled at him like he had done something wonderful when he'd really only carried back a flower in his pocket until he found a bottle that could hold the stem and keep the flower upright.
Merle would've told him he was dumb for bringing the flower and for telling her the story. He would've told him that, despite her grief, he was stupid for not trying to get something out of the look that she was giving him. That was one of the many and varied reasons that Daryl figured there weren't any flowers growing for Merle.
But that flower, he believed, grew for Sophia.
It grew for Carol.
And it grew for Daryl because he had to be the one to find it. For whatever reason—superstition or foolishness or something else entirely—he had to be the one to deliver a flower that symbolized hope to Carol. It was especially true since he hadn't managed, yet, to deliver her daughter to her.
And, if nothing else, Daryl got from her the first hint of a smile that he'd seen on her face since everything had happened and it made him feel good.
Maybe he got something out of it, after all, even if it wasn't what Merle would have suggested he go seeking. The simple smile from her might not have been enough for Merle—but it was enough for Daryl.